Waffling
by Princess Alyra
Summary: Arthur catches Merlin in an act... just not necessarily the act Merlin thought he did. Cue a lot of really terrible explanations. Semi-crack.


Um. I found this by while I was searching for a completely different file on my computer and thought... why not? Also - the site's working again! Woo!

* * *

><p><strong>Waffling<strong>

"There's quite a simple explanation, Sire."

"Oh, _is there_?" said Arthur dangerously, taking a step closer to a suddenly very anxious and fidgety Merlin. "I'd be very delighted to hear it, Merlin. Please, enlighten me with what I'm sure is not only an adequate explanation, but an entertaining one as well. Go on. I'm listening."

Merlin blinked to make time, but unfortunately, blinking is not universally known for taking much time at all. Thus, in the total .03 seconds that elapsed while his eyes closed and opened again, he still had not come up with an explanation that was not only adequate and entertaining, but would also prevent his head from saying its sad goodbyes to the rest of him.

"Yes," he said, because while blinking is not known for taking up vast amounts of time, speaking most certainly is, especially for those skilled in the art of talking circles around a topic that could conceivably have been covered in a word or two. "Well."

Unfortunately for Merlin, his previous skill in such arts seemed to have abandoned him at such crucial moments. Arthur noticed.

"Oh, come now," he scoffed, "you're always talking, I can't imagine why it should be so difficult for you now. Unless, of course, you _don't _have an explanation. In which case..." The end of his sentence remained ominously unsaid.

"No, I do!" said Merlin hurriedly. "I, er, _you see, _Sire..." He straightened up, throwing confidence behind his words for authenticity. "It's all a matter of happenstance, you know? Some people find themselves entered into a world in which they are not only catered to, but hand-fed for perpetuity. Others are born with naught but their own skin to keep them warm - well, actually, that's all any of us are _literally _born with in terms of warmth, but for argument's sake, can we ignore literalness?

"The point is, it's neither person's _fault _whether they're born with only the skin on their back or with a metaphorical wool coat. Yes, if the bare person spent all their lives working for it, they might achieve _close _to what the coat-covered man was born with, and a man born with the coat _could _take it off and pretend he's bare-skinned, but the bare man with a coat still got years of bareness behind him and the coated man that's bare only has to put his old coat back on and it's like nothing's changed."

He paused here for breath, but he plunged onward before he lost his train of thought - or indeed, before he allowed himself to think too hard about it in the first place.

"So basically, good or bad, you're stuck with whatever you're born with, either naked or cloaked. But someone born able to say, make his _own _cloak just by thinking about it, that's not his fault either, is it? You can't punish a man for _being born_. You wouldn't punish someone for being born poor or rich, so why punish someone who's born with magic? It's... I mean, I can't help that I can make a coat by thinking about it. It's not _my_ fault."

He shut his eyes when he realized how incredibly little sense the vast majority of that made.

Arthur's mouth hung open like someone had pinned it that way. His lungs took a while to puff out the oxygen needed for making sound.

"What," he said finally, "are you even _talking _about?"

Merlin's eyes squinted open. "Well, maybe most of it sounded like a load of rubbish, but I thought that last part was pretty self-explanatory, given the... given..." He stopped, sighed, and started over. "You didn't even see me doing magic, did you."

Wordlessly, Arthur shook his head.

"You were talking about the hole in your floor."

Arthur's lips became a hard line. He nodded.

"_I can explain._"

* * *

><p><strong>Edited Jan. 8th - <em>aljdsflajfal <em>I HAD EDITED THE "FROGS IN YOUR BED" TO "HOLE IN YOUR FLOOR" BUT APPARENTLY DID NOT SAVE IT THAT WAY SO I'VE JUST FIXED IT AND NOW I FEEL LIKE A COMPLETE IDIOT SOMEONE SHOOT ME.**


End file.
